Glass Message Board
Glass Identification - Post here for all ID requests => Glass Paperweights => Topic started by: flying free on January 26, 2017, 07:59:50 PM
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Looking for help.
I'm sure I've read somewhere 19th century reference - about 'rosette' s - were they mentioned in describing canes or something? i.e. another word for a cane used in the 19th century? Was it in the translation of the millefiori balls?
It's just that I've come across a 19th century registered design for one and wondered if it was to do with paperweights?
Thanks for any help.
m
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In The Dictionary of Glass Paperweights - an illustrated primer, 2009, by Paul H Dunlop:
rosette A large millefiori cane slice or central circular cluster of closely set canes representing a flower.
But no illustration is provided and no information on when it may have been in use, or by whom.
Personally, it is not a term that I recall seeing anywhere else in connection with paperweights. But maybe somebody else knows more than I do (which is often the case).
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Hello m and Kev,
a definite "terminology" for paperweights is still missing, and for glass in general there is NEWMAN, Harold: An illustrated dictionary of Glass, Thames&Hudson 1977- a real bounty of information, but many paperweight- and millefiori- entries may be obsolete, as knowledge has broadened and deepened quite a lot since then...
For the term "rosette", the author is possibly referring to the "rosetta" bead, which is a variation of a "chevron bead", so the term has obviously intruded from bead making terminology. Beadmaking (trade beads, "slave" beads...)was very profitable for Venezia from 15th to the 18th century, with a steady decline until the beginning 19th century. "Rosetta" means "little rose" in Italian, without telling too much about what it looks like. No doubt, some of the beadmaking techniques were transferred to the millefiori production, intended for paperweights and other millefiori objects, with one main difference: the beads needed no clear glass cover or dome because of their small size, and beads needed a hole in the center, but paperweights nearly always were made with a more or less magnifying clear glass dome to enhance the inner decoration. So some of the original bead decorations may have found their way into millefiori canes, for paperweights.
Kind regards, Erhard
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Thank you Erhard and Kev :)
It is used in the glossary of Doris Robinson's book on paperweight collecting published 2014. What I don't know is if it was a term used in the millefiori cane world in the mid 19th C.
Rosette: A millefiori cane made to resemble a flower
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=NpQkAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA105&dq=millefiori+rosette&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiHh62dkufRAhWKJcAKHckRCGsQ6AEIMzAF#v=onepage&q=millefiori%20rosette&f=false
Hopefully and very kindly Paul has offered to have a look for me next time he is at the archives at Kew.
m